‘You saved me,’ he said.
‘One of my section.’
There was something wrong with Doe Capaldi’s voice. Had the wire in his head been bent out of true by that dent?
‘But I tried to kill you!’
‘All follow Nyro now.’
‘You can’t really believe that!’
‘What else believe?’
Doe Capaldi heaved at a plate of rock. Something shifted. A rush of gravel slid down into their rocky prison. Olam tried to jump up to help him. Then he remembered he no longer had a body. Doe Capaldi had cut it loose, only carrying Olam’s head as they ran from the bomb.
‘Nearly there!’
Bands of shadow and light. Olam still couldn’t believe what Doe Capaldi had done. How could one of the aristocracy give up so much, so easily?
‘No Wien any more,’ said Doe Capaldi, answering his unspoken question. ‘Better live two years good Artemisian than die in stadium.’
‘Yes, but…’
There was a final grinding of stones followed by a creaking scrape as they settled into a new position.
‘Got it. Come on.’
Doe Capaldi took Olam’s head and pushed it through the space between the rocks. Olam found himself facing Doe Capaldi as he wriggled and scraped his way to freedom.
‘Not far,’ said Doe Capaldi. ‘Can see light.’
Olam saw clearly now the dent in Doe Capaldi’s head, the silver glint of electromuscle where his shoulder had been cracked open. Then something occurred to him.
‘Live two years,’ he said. ‘You said “better to live two years as good Artemisian…”.’
‘Bomb. Radiation on wire in mind. Cut lifespan.’
‘What? How do you know this?’
‘All troop leaders told.’ Doe Capaldi laughed, then concentrated, and came close to forming a proper sentence. ‘Why do you think that conscripts put to work on clearing mountains?’
Doe Capaldi pushed Olam’s head forward once more, then painfully, metal scraping on rock, he pulled himself onwards. Somewhere behind them the rock creaked.
‘You knew this?’ said Olam. ‘You knew this all the time?’ Realization struck. ‘So this is your revenge. You save my life, but only for a little while. Two years?’
‘More like six months now,’ said Doe Capaldi. ‘We both too close to blast.’
And at that he gave Olam’s head a last shove and sent him bouncing out into the rain.
Olam was free.
Free to live for another six months.
He heard a noise nearby.
‘Over here!’ he called.
A clattering of feet, then he saw the grey shape of an infantryrobot leaning over him.
‘What happened to you?’ a voice asked.
Susan felt disgusted with herself. It was as if she had let her hands rust, allowed her electromuscle to unravel. As if she had let someone else build her own body for her. To kneel at the feet of another man and to twist his metal…?
She had ideas in her mind, pictures and emotions she had been saving up for this day, but they waited untouched in the darkened rooms of her mind as her hands twisted the young man’s wire in the pattern that Nettie had just taught them.
Twenty-three women knelt in that room, all working in silence.
Yellow eyes stared down at her in contempt, and Susan felt such hatred in her heart. All that had happened to her at the hands of Artemis, she now focused that hatred on the man seated before her. Oh, to stand up and to take hold of his coil, to see the expression in his eyes as she crushed it slowly.
But she didn’t dare. Instead, she just twisted blue metal. It was too thin, she thought; the lifeforce that flowed through it seemed so much weaker than that of Karel’s wire. Everything about this man was a pale shadow of her husband.
What would Karel think if he could see her now, kneeling like this?
She thrust the thought from her mind, just went on twisting wire.
Nettie walked around the room, watching them, checking on what they were doing, offering advice. Everyone seemed to be doing okay, but no one dared otherwise for, there in the background, they could feel the presence of the Scout, eyeing them, half mad with the shrieking current that poured through her mind, waiting for an excuse to pounce.
Susan’s hands twisted away, following the instructions that Nettie had given, winding the deep brain around the base knot… and a growing sense of unease began to emerge from the disgust. She was reaching the end of Nettie’s preliminary map of a Nyro mind. What was she supposed to do then? Follow the plan that she had been working out for Karel and her child? What type of bastard child would emerge from such a synthesis?
The other women felt that unease too. They stole glances at each other. Susan could see them. None of them looked directly at her, though.
Nettie clapped her hands together in a rattle of copper.
‘Okay, ladies, and now we stop!’
Susan and the rest paused, their fingers holding their place in the weave.
‘Put down the minds.’
No one moved.
‘Put down the minds, ladies.’
There was a murmur of concern.
Someone spoke up. ‘But they will unravel!’
The Scout pounced, a bladed hand was held to one kneeling woman’s neck.
‘So let it unravel, Tokvah.’ The Scout’s voice sounded like a drill piercing hard metal.
A cry took hold of the voicebox of every woman kneeling in the room.
‘But ladies!’ shrilled Nettie. ‘Ladies! You hold nothing but wire. Nothing but metal! Weren’t you listening to all I said? Nyro says there is no difference between metal that walks and metal that lies in the ground! Whether we are spontaneous or twisted by our mothers, we are all nothing but metal. This city, the railway lines, the wire that you hold, all is nothing but metal. However Nyro’s philosophy chooses to shape it, there is nothing but metal. You hold wire in your hands, ladies. Let it go. Let it spill and tangle on the ground, to be later made into guns or blades or walls or other minds. What does it matter? It is nothing but metal.’
‘No…’ sobbed a woman. The Scout was suddenly there, knocking the wire from her hands, her hand on her neck, squeezing, breaking her coil.
The women on either side shook the wire from their hands, sobbing electronic squeaks and wails.
‘Well done, ladies,’ called Nettie. ‘You see? It is nothing but metal! Remember, this truth is written in the very stars and moons themselves!’
The woman who had just had her coil broken slumped to the floor.
Crying, sobbing, Susan shook the wire from her hands and saw her second child die.
Maoco O
Noises echoed throughout the fort. The muffled sounds of distant explosions, the shriek of metal being torn apart, the dull pounding thump thump thump of engines working away deep underground. Artemis was here, stripping the home of the City Guards apart.
And now it was time for Maoco O to face them once more.
It felt so strange, leaving his hiding place dressed like this. He felt so weak and vulnerable, with his badly
